looked down on the seculars, and their constant endeavours to shut these out from popularity, influence, and a fair portion of emolument.

How is the continual need of reformation among monks to be accounted for? How was it that those of the East, as M. de Montalembert has told us, sank after a very short period of brilliancy into utter and hopeless stagnation? How was it that the monachism of the West had fallen into decay when Benedict arose to revive it? that the Benedictines have in all times been desirous to mitigate their rule by evasive glosses? that the Cluniacs in the tenth century began in severity, and in the twelfth had degenerated into luxury? that the Cistercians, having set out with a rigour which was intended to shame the Cluniacs, themselves within a century had fallen into the same faults, when the Mendicant orders arose? That the mendicant Franciscans, according to Matthew Paris, degenerated more within a quarter of a century after their first appearance in England than the older orders had done within three or four centuries,* and became marks for satire beyond all the other orders, as being patterns of all that their profession bound them not to be? 'Who,' asks M. de Montalembert triumphantly, 'would dare to say that the abuses of monachism were the natural or necessary consequence of the institution? Good sense and history prove the contrary. But human weakness, as we know but too well, is little compatible with sustained perfection' (clii.). To us it seems, on the contrary, that history does show a connexion between the institution and the abuses-not as if these were the fruits which monachism was intended to produce, but because they were the natural effects of it, seeing what the institution was and what human nature is. There was the fundamental error of an over-strained ideal, which might, for a time, find people ready to strive after it, but, when the fervour of novelty had passed away, was sure to be found impracticable; and hence it is that, as one of the greatest of mediæval monks, the 'venerable' Peter of Cluny, witnesses, monastic reform usually took the form of new foundations, instead of a restoration of discipline in those which already existed.† If monachism were all that M. de Montalembert supposes it to be, it would have remained pure while all around it was corrupt. But, far from showing this as its actual result, he can only tell us that, if religion flourished beyond the monasteries, monachism flourished too; that if monks were bad in any age,

*Matt. Paris, p. 612, A.D. 1243, ed. Wats.

Nam, sicut novit sapientia vestra, in negotio religionis facilius possunt nova fundari quam vetera reparari.'-Pet. Clun. Ep. i. 23.

"

their contemporaries of other classes were probably somewhat worse (Introd., xvii.-xx.); and he does nothing to account creditably for their universal tendency to degenerate.

M. de Montalembert is fond of throwing his defence of monkery into the form of an attack on those who object to it. He tells us that the same complaints which we make against monastic wealth and luxury are made by communists against our own wealth and enjoyments. He tells us that everywhere the labours of one generation are meant to prepare the way for the ease of another; and he asks, Why should it be wrong in monks, rather than in other men, to enjoy the good things which their predecessors have acquired? (cxxxi.-ii.). It is difficult to believe that this can be seriously meant. We admit, indeed, that monks may in some sense rightly benefit as to temporal things by the exertions of their predecessors: we would not, for instance, maintain that those of Clairvaux ought for ever to have lived on the beech-leaves to which St. Bernard and his first companions in the Valley of Wormwood' were sometimes reduced for food, or that they were bound never to substitute good stone buildings for the wooden huts which had sheltered their community in its infancy. But the parallel which our author attempts to draw is no parallel at all. That succession of ease to labour which is blameless in ordinary men is wrong in monks, because it is against the very nature of their profession, against the very principle of their existence as a special and separate class; because the new recruits, as well as the first members, profess obedience to a discipline which forbids such things. Was it the object of a severe monastic founder, as it is that of a busy merchant, or manufacturer, or lawyer, or physician, that his successors should live on their lands in the enjoyment of riches and dignity? Was it the purpose of his strict rule that they should have the opportunity of running into the same corruptions which had offended him in the older orders, and from which every new order in its turn was a reaction? *

But

As a picture of monastic luxury, we may quote the description given by Giraldus Cambrensis of a dinner in the refectory at Cauterbury Cathedral, on Trinity Sunday, 1179. Of the dishes, and the multitude of them, what shall I say? Sixteen or more, very sumptuous, were served up in order, not to say against all order; and at last, moreover, by way of generale (a monastic term, for the explanation of which we must refer to Ducange), vegetables were served upon every table, but were scarcely tasted. For you might see so many kinds of fish, roast and boiled, stuffed and fried, so many skilfully dressed with eggs and pepper, so many savours and salt things prepared by the art of the cooks in order to provoke gluttony and excite the appetite. Moreover, you might see here wine and strong drink (siceram), spiced cup and hipocras (pigmentum et claretum), must, and mead, and mulberry wine, and all that can intoxicate, in such profusion, that ale, which is made of the best quality in England, and especially in Kent, had no

place

But why, asks M. de Montalembert, should we blame the monks for a life which, after all, had no fault except that of being only too like our own?

'What! the Benedictines ate meat; the barefooted Carmelites wore shoes; the Cordeliers no longer girt their loins with a cord! Indeed? and you who accuse them, how much of all this do you do? They did not flog themselves so often as in former times! But you how often in the week do you undergo such discipline? . . . . . After all, the most blameable, the most depraved, lived as you live; this is their crime. If it be one, it is not for you to chastise it.'-190.

We must think that our author's sarcastic eloquence has quite run away with him in this passage. Surely we may at once believe our own practice to be Christian, although without monastic peculiarities, and yet fairly censure a monk for the breach of his special obligations-just as, although we be no soldiers ourselves, we may despise a soldier who runs away in battle.

Again, when M. de Montalembert tells us that, if the monks of later days were unlike their founders, so too have Christians in general become unlike the primitive Christians, we answer by denying the parallel. That the good Christians of our own day, to whatever communion they belong, are in many respects unlike the good Christians of the primitive times, we fully admit (and it is not with the false professors of either age that we are now concerned). But there is this difference between the two cases— that Christianity, being a system of principles rather than of rules, can adapt itself to all changes of circumstances, whereas monachism, being a system of strict and detailed rules, is nothing unless these be observed. A man, therefore, may be a good Christian now without being like the fishermen of Galilee in outward things; but if he wear shoes, he cannot be a good barefooted Carmelite; if he indulge in the forbidden vanity of keeping a peacock or a monkey, he cannot be a good Praemonstratensian. Nor do we think that M. de Montalembert is very successful when he sets one accusation against another, with the intention of making them destroy each other. Thus he tells us that, if monks observed their rule strictly, they were condemned as being

place among the rest; but here ale was among the drinks as vegetables had been among the dishes. What would Paul the hermit say to such doings? or Antony? or Benedict, the father and institutor of the monastic life?' Gir. Cambr. de Rebus a se Gestis, i. 5 (in vol. i. of his Works edited by the Rev. J. S. Brewer for the Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland'). We suspect that an American traveller who has lately recorded a delightful visit to Canterbury, where I was made so happy under the very shades of the Cathedral' ('Ninety Days' Worth of Europe,' by E. E. Hale, Boston, 1861, p. 194), had no experiences equal to this.

not

not of the age; while, if they lived with greater laxity, their laxity was no less condemned (clxxxvi.). We beg that we may not be supposed to defend any enemies of monachism who have advanced these charges as a pretext for plunder; but we yet believe that in both cases the charges may have been just, simply because monachism had outlived its time. The monastic rules were unfitted for the eighteenth or the nineteenth century, while yet those who had bound themselves to them were wrong in neglecting them. So again, as to the alleged contradiction and injustice, that monks, if they managed their estates badly, were accused of neglecting their duty to society, while if they managed them well, they were charged with being too rich. It may

be answered, that to be careless landlords is blameable in monks as well as in other men, while to make the very utmost of their property, and freely to enjoy the income of it, was in them a different thing from what it would have been in a lay landowner, or in a corporation not bound by a vow of poverty. In like manner, as to the dilemma that they were sometimes charged with being too many, and sometimes with being too few. In the one case, the retirement of a large body of men from active pursuits may have interfered with the development of industry in a country; in the other case, a small and wealthy society of monks may not have been enough to make a right use of their property without running into indulgences forbidden by their rule. Again we beg that we may not be supposed to justify spoliation; but we do not think that the contradictory pleas advanced for it are, as our author too readily assumes, destructive of each other.

The great good of which these two volumes contain the evidence was the inestimable service which the monks rendered to religion, learning, and civilisation in the transition from ancient times to the middle ages. And on this M. de Montalembert eloquently descants, while he yet truly says that the object of the institution was something different-namely, the discipline of the soul (xii.-xv.). In thus stating the purpose of monachism, he takes lower ground than some others of its apologists, who suppose it to have originated, not in that care for self-discipline which might under such regulations have sometimes degenerated into selfishness, but in a desire to give up the mind to the undisturbed contemplation of the Godhead. We believe, however, that M. de Montalembert's view is right, and is supported by historical fact; and that, although pure contemplation may have been the employment of many monks-especially in Egypt and the Eastit was, like the cultivation of learning, or like the other services rendered by the monks to civilisation, rather a graft on the main idea, and a matter of individual taste, than any part of the original

intention.

intention. But, taking M. de Montalembert's representation to be correct, it appears to us that the idea of monachism was necessarily above the great multitude of those who adopted the profession. And if we wish to see in how far the monastic ideal was fulfilled by the great mass of the monks, we have only to read any chronicle which records the life of a monastic community -such as Jocelin of Brakelond's Chronicle of St. Edmund's Bury, or Thorn's Chronicle of St. Augustine's, or the History of Vezelay by Hugh of Poitiers. From these unadorned narratives, we see that monks, instead of answering to their ideal, were, on the whole, merely like other men, but with some of their earthly characteristics made more intense by their peculiar circumstances. Or let any one look at the monks who swarm in the streets of an Italian city; and let him say whether their appearance is such as to give the idea of any especially elevated Christianity.

We have again and again admitted that under God's providence monachism was the means of immense good in former days. But, if we own this, we may also see a providential use in the acts of those who-it may have been from the grossest and the worst of motives - suppressed the monastic communities in various countries. The civilising work of monks was done long ago; and modern civilisation is carried on by many agencies, among which the influence of monachism has no place. The question for our own time is, whether monachism ought now to be maintained as one form of religious life; and for ourselves, whatever may be thought as to the desirableness of finding some places of quiet retreat for devotion or study, we do not think: that there is any need for anything properly monastical.*

To the common objection that monks were idle, M. de Montalembert replies, first, by saying that they were not idle; that they tilled the soil; that they preserved ancient literature by their transcripts; that they wrote books of their own; that they bore all the toil of missionary labour; and, with his usual logic, he asks which of the objectors would like to endure for a day 'that life of unceasing fatigues, of disgusts, of privations, of watchings, of distant journeys, which is the portion of the last of the missionaries, or of the most obscure of the confessors whom the monastic

* M. de Montalembert is indignant with those who, like Chateaubriand, represent monasteries as places of refuge for sick spirits; on the contrary, he says, their inmates were the very healthiest and strongest spirits of all, and were invigorated by the monastic discipline (Introd. xxviii., xlvi.). We believe that the representation which he denounces has its foundation more in romance than in fact; yet surely it will hardly be denied that monasteries sometimes served as refuges for weary souls, and it is certain that this is one of the pleas by which their advocates have most frequently endeavoured to overcome the objections of Protestants to the monastic system.

orders